Right at Your Door (2007)

Bomb Before the Storm

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Art director Chris Gorak (Fight Club, The Man Who Wasn't There) makes his directorial debut with this small-scale, cautionary disaster film. A dirty bomb goes off in Los Angeles. Brad (Rory Cochrane) seals up his house, but when his wife Lexi (Mary McCormack) makes it back home from ground zero, he decides not to let her inside. Gorak racks up the tension and sustains it with an innovative score and less-than-innovative hand-held camerawork, and the performances are skillfully controlled. However, the agitated, theatrical dialogue reaches frenzied, jackhammer proportions even during the film's supposed quiet moments; it's thoroughly draining. Scotty Noyd Jr. and Tony Perez co-star. Peter Watkins (The War Game) made several of this type of frightening what-if parable in the 1960s, but far more effectively.